Political commentators and the scornful man and woman in the street increasingly spit out the word "circus" to deride the Turnbull government and today's federal parliament. But how wretchedly unfair this is. Yes, methought on Thursday at ringside at Infamous – Cabaret Cirque Sensation, how horribly unfair this comparison is – to circuses.
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For the special joy a fine circus gives us is to see performers doing things, fabulous things, fabulously well. Meanwhile, though, how seldom governments and parliaments (especially the present government of cannibalising Coalition piranhas and the present parliament of dual-nationality nincompoops) give us performances that make us gasp with delight.
Between multiple gasps on Thursday night (for example at the sustained Wheel of Death display featuring daredevil feats achieved by sequin-glittering athletes romping inside circular treadmills being speed-whirled by a giant contraption) my mind flew to the disappointments of Australian public life.
What we love about circuses is to see performers doing, brilliantly, things we could never do. Meanwhile, some of our contempt for clumsy governments and for nasty parliaments is that they are made up of people doing, poorly and often corruptly and hypocritically, jobs we all know we could do far better and far more ethically.
The ANU's authoritative 2016 study led by Professor Ian McAllister found (and found it even before the same-sex shenanigans and dual-nationality catastrophes of recent months) that trust in politicians and any interest in politics is ebbing away disastrously.
"What we are seeing in Australia are the beginnings of a popular disaffection with the political class that has emerged so dramatically in Britain, United States and Italy," Professor McAllister sighed.
Following up my politics versus circuses theorem above, my glittering contribution to political science, let us compare Infamous star Joe Ashton (the most daring daredevil of the Wheel of Death act) with his federal political equivalent (in stardom and in rank) PM Malcolm Turnbull.
What is there that do-nothing, believe-in-nothing Turnbull ever does that you and I couldn't do with more purpose, aplomb and conviction? But what is there the Tarzan-bodied, agile Joe Ashton does that any of us could ever do? Ashton has arrived where he is with aeons of dedicated training and a powerful sense of purpose and vocation. Malcolm Turnbull by contrast, like so many parliamentarians, seems to have gambolled into parliament on a whim, in much the same way in which you and I might gambol to the circus, looking for a nice night out.
On Thursday (and still laughing after an inspired act by accident-prone superclown Jessie Grant in which he is somehow swallowed up by a giant red balloon he has somehow inflated with a leaf blower) I thought that if this government and parliament are after all a circus then what a tawdry circus it is.
Federal politics has never been so unsexy but Infamous prides itself on being an adults-only entertainment.
For example the whole evening is patrolled ringside by a spectacular semi-nude Catwoman whose bare (but still somehow stardust-sparkling) nipples continue to stalk and haunt me days after the show.
And gentlemen, if you sit at the Infamous ringside, beware that at one point Catwoman chooses a man from the audience to subject to some lubricious feline bondage and discipline humiliations. I would have died if she'd chosen me – but then, there are far worse ways for a heterosexual man to die.
And speaking of heterosexuality and death (Shakespeare's grand, recurring themes), to sit in a ringside seat at Infamous is often to have a voluptuous semi-naked young woman dancing within touching distance of you. This sounds like fun for boys and yet, when you are 72 and feeling fragile, to have a sturdy, pneumatic goddess dancing in your face is a mixed blessing. You are terrified she might plop herself into your lap, crushing you with an avalanche of warm and womanly fishnet-wrapped flesh. (Again, though, perhaps there are worse ways for a heterosexual male cockatoo to topple off his perch.)
Late in his long life the comedian George Burns, asked what he felt about the surge of sex and violence in popular entertainment, quipped ruefully that "When you get to my age sex and violence are the same thing!"
On Thursday and under the steamy Big Top, more terrified than titillated by sexy dancing going on in my face, I knew what George meant.
Infamous – Cabaret Cirque Sensation, continues at Majura Park until December 17. Bookings: 0411 302 095 or infamous.net.au.
